Iran: Saudi intervention in Yemen will not go without a response

A senior Iranian official has warned that Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen will not go without a response.

“Saudi Arabia’s behaviour in besieging Yemen and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid will not remain unanswered”, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, said on Sunday.

“We are considering all options for helping the Yemeni people, the immediate delivery of humanitarian assistance and transfer of the injured Yemenis,” Abdollahian added.

Iran’s Fars news agency reported Abdollahian as saying that Saudi Arabia does not have the right to decide the fate of others on their behalf, noting that the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries and led to “a deep rift between the government and the people and created instability in the country which continues until today”.

“The Saudi military aggression against Yemen will only result in instability in Saudi Arabia and our shared region,” he said.

Abdollahian said his country expected Saudi Arabia to follow a path that promotes sustainable security in the region, but today it has become the main promoter of regional instability. “We still hope that it will play a constructive role in the region by changing its wrong approach,” he added.

Abdollahian claimed that Tehran has always supported dialogue between the two countries on a diplomatic track.

“Iran’s policy is to help promote peace, security and stability in Yemen and the whole region,” he stressed.

A few days earlier, Saudi warplanes prevented an Iranian plane containing humanitarian goods from landing in Yemen and forced it to return to Tehran.

An Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia announced last week the end of its military intervention in Yemen and the beginning of a new phase it named “Renewal of Hope”, which aims to promote political dialogue based on the UN Security Council resolutions and the Gulf initiative and to continue the fight against terrorism.